Visual Studio overlay in an application for researchers. What does it mean?

Question

In the solution explorer, do you ever see overlapping hearts in the nodes of a class definition. What does it mean?

Answer 1

I suppose you mean the signal icon. A heart is displayed above types / members when they are internal (C #) or Friend (VB.NET). The meaning of the icons is documented in Microsoft Docs :

• Friend / Inner. Available only from the project.

Answer 2

In C #, this happens when you assign a value to a nullable type.

Example:

int? k = null; //here the symbol for k in the Watch Windows is without heart k = 5; 

After assignment (k = 5), the symbol k will also contain a heart overlay.

I conducted a test using Visual Studio 2017 [visual-studio-2017].